


More Than Her Thousand Names

by ladderax (allnuthatchforest)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Backstory, Crimes & Criminals, Domesticity, F/M, Fingerfucking, Genderswap, Love, Pegging, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Strap-Ons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:15:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allnuthatchforest/pseuds/ladderax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"For the first few months she woke up every morning and told herself <i>It’s OK. You can get up and go anytime, if it gets to be too much. You’re not trapped. You’re never trapped.</i> Yusuf had once told her, <i>You could escape from your deathbed, Miss Eames.</i></p><p>Was it wrong that she didn't want to escape? That she was OK with this change, that she was happy? She felt like this wasn't the kind of thing that should make her happy."</p><p>Arthur and always-a-girl!Eames fall in love, fuck up, compromise, joke, try to be decent to each other, and have a lot of fun playing with Arthur's arse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than Her Thousand Names

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song "My Lady's House" by Iron and Wine.

“You should grow a beard.”

She’s tracing his smooth, slightly clefted chin with a deft fingertip, before she leans up and softly kisses said beardless chin.

“Not on your life,” he says with mock sternness. “It’s not my thing. Besides, I don’t think it’d look right on me.”

She pouts and he kisses her lips lightly, amazed at how much more of them there is to kiss, how much deeper he feels he could sink in.

“But how will wee William or Olivia be able to tell which is Mummy and which is Daddy, then? We’re both so pretty.” She grins. “Besides, I’m a pregnant woman, Arthur. I’ve got cravings. It’s your job to satisfy them, yeah?”

“Yeah. For _food_ , Eames. You can’t eat a beard.”

“Oh, I’m certain I’d eat yours,” she growls, nibbling his chin.

“OK then,” he says crossing his arms and looking down at her smugly. “I’ll grow a beard. If you let me call you Valerie.”

She feigns horror.

“Never.”

“Well, it’s settled then. No beard.”

She sighs and turns on her side, away from him, though he can still see her wicked smile. He gets a moment to look at her, stretched out, the gentle swell of her hips and side in her myrtle-green flowered dress limned subtly by the sunlight. He’s still amazed by how untiringly pretty she is and always has been: the first day they met, when she was wary-eyed, sharp-tongued, dressed like Katharine Hepburn; and now, when she’s stretched out in his sheets, breathing slightly strained summer breaths, happy and comfortable to be there and with him (he still can’t get over that sometimes) and heavily pregnant with his child.

He leans over and presses a kiss to the curve of her waist, lets his hand drift down to the knee-length hem of her dress and casually let it move as if the hem were just floating upward of its own accord and he was simply following it. He thinks for a moment over an old question and then decides yes, the answer’s yes now.

“I won’t grow a beard, but I’ll let you have something else you wanted,” he murmurs, nosing into her neck, opening his lips to moisten the soft skin there.

“If it’s got anything to do with those waterbirthing seminars…I was just humoring you when I said I'd consider it, OK?” she warns.

“I don’t see why you’re so opposed to waterbirth,” he says stiffly. “It allows gravity to do most of the work, and it’s a much more natural and relaxing experience for both mother and child. Hospital births stress everyone out too much. Having a baby doesn’t have to be treated like a disease, you know?”

“Arthur, baby doll, please stop mansplaining or I will bite your pretty nose off.”

“Fair enough.”

“Sad,” she says, running her hand over his chest lightly. “You tried so hard to erase any vestige of your hippie upbringing, and then you start talking about natural this and environmental that and the body-mind connection…looks like you can’t ever suppress Rainstorm Wolf completely, no matter how hard you try to replace him with Arthur.”

“That is not even funny.”

“Rainstorm Wolf Goldwasser, my love, my baby daddy, my partner in crime.”

“Stop that or Steve Winwood is playing that song at our _wedding_.”

"And that is exactly why I'm not marrying you. Rainstorm is an appropriate name, though,” she croons, “because of how fucking wet you get me.”

“Come and see me…” he sings, menacingly, at a barely perceptible volume, through grinning teeth.

“No! Enough! God, I hate that song,” she huffs.

“Anyway, what I was going to offer had absolutely nothing to do with the baby,” he continues, kissing her nose for emphasis. “Before I was so rudely interrupted by your jumping to all sorts of conclusions, I was going to suggest that, well..” He's struggling to find an elegant way to express his sentiment, until he remembers to whom he's talking and the situation they're in. “Baby, darling girl,” he says boldly, “I want you to fuck my ass. No, not just with your fingers—well, you can do that too—god that’s fucking amazing when you do that. With the strap-on. I think my masculinity can finally handle it.”

She bites her bottom lip with her teeth, barely able to suppress her glee.

“Oh goodness. You look like a twelve year old girl who's just been promised a pony, Eames.”

“In a way, sweetheart,” she drawls, grinning wickedly and running her fingers through his hair, “that’s exactly what I am.”

 

2.

 

 _I went legit for this guy_ , she thinks. _Me. Who the fuck am I_?

After the inception job, Arthur, like many a grey or black hat hacker before him (though of computers, not of dreams) was tapped by the government, promised a cush job and the ability to set his own salary and conditions. To an extent. One of his conditions? _You give my fiancée a job too. I trust her implicitly. And she’s a genius. There’s no one better at what she does._

For all her legendary charm, he had a quiet, firm, authoritative persuasiveness that could work just as well. And she found it incredibly appealing. He’d once managed to talk a chemist out of shooting an extractor over a misunderstanding over her share, and Eames had watched, pokerfaced but impressed, as Arthur had employed his calm and centeredness to get the woman to put the gun down and understand that she could still turn back and not do any damage to her reputation. Got her to understand, even if it wasn't true, that these were honest mistakes and miscommunications, but that such events (standoffs, threats to lives) were not rare in their volatile and closed world and no one would think any less of her for having a minor outburst like this. He did it in subtler words, of course. But he understood that he had first of all to make the woman feel that her action was not yet irreversible; he understood that shame was often the fire that lit the fuse of such anger.

Only afterwards did she see him shake, see his fear, barely perceptible to her and probably imperceptible to everyone else. She wanted to pull him into her arms then and there, kiss his hairline, rub his back. And maybe later fuck him all better.

There’d been some slight fuming on her part at his use of the word fiancée. And his assumption that she’d just love to work as a forger for the C.I.A. He thought he knew what was best for her sometimes, and what was best for everyone, and she’d slightly resented the implication that she couldn’t get a job on her own. Plus she’d already tried the straight-and-narrow, with the Royal Navy, remember?

But he’d said he was just used to making sure people were safe and had options. That she could turn the job down if she wanted, and he wouldn’t try to dissuade her at all. That he understood if the life he wanted after having spent so long having someone else’s life—kids, home, security-- wasn’t the life she had in mind.

They’d vetted her and miraculously she’d been approved—well, she’d always been good at keeping her nose clean. She’d bargained the offer down to agreeing to work as something of a consultant, advising on the uses of extraction and identifying dreamshare-related risks to national security. That had been enough for now.

And now they had a house in the D.C. suburbs. Leafy neighborhood, huge green chemically-treated lawn (boy had Mr. and Mrs. Goldwasser had a field day with that one), whitewashed brick, gabled roof. She claimed it was his house and that she was just a long-term visitor, but they both knew she had no intentions of going back to Kenya or anywhere else anytime soon. She had chosen the house. She had chosen not to take the offer from MI6, either, because—she told Arthur—she’d lived in Britain before, and in its former colonies, but she’d never lived in America.

For the first few months she woke up every morning and told herself _It’s OK. You can get up and go anytime, if it gets to be too much. You’re not trapped. You’re never trapped._ Yusuf had once told her, "You could escape from your deathbed, Miss Eames."

Was it wrong that she didn't want to go back, that she was OK with this change, that she was happy? She felt like this wasn't what should make her happy.

Was it wrong that she was comfortable and happy on Arthur's turf, giving him the child he'd wanted since he was twelve (and she'd found she wanted, really wanted, quite by accident), taking at least a break from being certain dreamhackers' go-to forger and cat burglar?

There was a garden where she’d planted (OK, or had someone else plant) giant mauve dahlias and lupines and lilies of the valley and other flowers she remembered from her childhood in Nottinghamshire. She’d decided to try out the role of the faithful lover and American and, when they’d conceived unintentionally, mother of a child who was also, marvelously, comprised of significant genetic input from one Arthur Goldwasser.

Eames was always up for an adventure, always up to see exactly how seamlessly she could fit into a new place and role. It was hard to feel trapped when she saw it that way. And when she felt loved, and needed, and this person who understood what her life had been thought she was smart and beautiful and competent, did it matter that the person was a lover, was a man?

She didn’t honestly know.

*

 _Well, this is certainly going to be an adventure_ , she thinks, holding the pair of satiny panties with a huge, lifelike plastic cock bobbing from them.

Eames looks down at him wriggling out of his blue Oxford, his chest bare and heaving. Somehow Arthur could make even being turned on as fuck, covered in sweat and struggling to buck an imaginary heat-monster weight off one’s chest on a 99 degree afternoon look graceful, but maybe that’s just because she’s in love with the guy. His face looks a bit like wax in the early stage of melting; his mouth is open, and she can see behind his teeth that tongue she loves to suck on and to feel in and on her, and she wants to leap to greet it like a long-lost friend even though they’d lain in bed making out pretty much all day.

She stands at the foot of the bed, making sure he’s looking at her. And he is. He most certainly is. Propped up on his arms, an already-sated crooked smile on his face, his dark hair unslicked and falling over his temples. He’s gorgeous.

She’d never thought she’d be his type; he was an Art Nouveau ink drawing, all stark contrasts and long elfin lines, streamlined and otherworldly, with something of the sharp yet loose sensuality of Beardsley’s John the Baptist. She imagined he’d go for stern, trig women, or gentle, breezy slips of girls—either way, they spoke tastefully and had long legs and were good at judging art and giving disapproving glances. And, she thought, if he did deign to fuck her or even take her out once in awhile, he’d surely say things like “It’s OK that you’re curvy, because you have a pretty face” or “You’re going out in that?”, or he’d be the gentler kind of tyrant, who bought her the kinds of clothes he thought she should wear and wrapped his condemnation up as a gift.

Arthur did neither.

 

*

It was in LA that they got together, after the last job. She was exhausted, and she was tired of pretending that she still reacted to him the same way she did the first time they’d met, when she thought he didn’t take her seriously and was just some bimbo who could do a party trick. She figured he’d know something was different if she didn’t take umbrage at everything he said, didn’t accuse him of undermining her intelligence. But something was different. She’d begun to wonder if maybe he was serious when he told her he was impressed, if his occasional pedantry and condescension had less to do with the fact that she looked and acted the way she did and more to do with the fact that Arthur could occasionally be a self-righteous little bitch regardless of the audience. And maybe she could work on that.

But he hadn’t said anything to her besides goodbye when they parted ways at the terminal; and he’d shaken her hand, and said formally “It’s been a pleasure working with you as always, Ms. Eames,” and she’d nodded and said, almost under her breath, “Sure, you too, Arthur. I’m sure we’ll meet again when Ariadne accidentally causes her husband’s death and needs a commission from Saito to bail her out, unless of course that husband ends up being you, in which case, it was nice knowing you," and it had been the worst of all possible things to say, for so, so many reasons, and he’d looked at her coldly before he left.

 _Well, Arthur_ , she thought, _that’s just what that Eames bitch does. She’s rude and slatternly and does perverse shit just to piss you off. Run along now and give that lovely little architect a call. I know you want to. I saw you moving in._

She ended up drinking in a bar in Los Feliz, of all places, where a rockabilly guy in a tight black T-shirt with thick red sideburns had come up to her slurring and asked if she was Scarlett Johansson.

“Yeah, sure. I guess that means the next one’s on you then?” she asked, indicating her drink.

She’d gone back to his place, which was dumb, but she felt dumb. She felt so stereotypical, that this was what she chose to do when dejected. She should’ve robbed a museum or stolen a zebra or something. She was V.T. Eames, international thief, not Carrie Bradshaw.

They had awful sex, and he did some sort of snake dance while undressing, and she just kept her head turned to the side and tried not to look at him. She couldn’t even pretend he was Arthur or anything; he had an itchy chest, and a loud voice, and a way of saying things like “Awww, hell yeah, drivin’ it home” that made her want to puke. She considered stealing his wallet, but she was revolted by the idea of even touching anything he owned.

I’ve been such an asshole. Maybe we at least could’ve been friends.

Sideburns was putting his mouth on her breast and making some kind of obscene overblown suckling sounds, like an adult man dressed as a baby for a comedy show, and she finally said “That’s it, fuck it, we’re done,” and he’d said, “Aww, come on, Natasha, weren’t we having fun?” to which she’d hadn’t actually had anything clever to say; she just said “No, no we were not.”

“Dammit, you Australian slut,” he’d screamed as she walked down the street. It was a good lesson of a sort. Sometimes she had to be reminded that people like that did, in fact, exist.

She called a taxi and ended up at the Chateau Marmont, where her room had a piano, and she ended up drunk and playing an improvised original composition called “Shut The Fuck Up, Arthur”, which was quite avant-garde and atonal and notable for its use of dynamics, specifically fortissimo.

If she’d had that Twitter thing, she could’ve said something like _Two days ago Valerie Eames was entering peoples’ dreams and planting ideas; tonight she is getting sad drunk and beating up a piano._

She’d been half hoping she’d left her phone with Sideburns, so she couldn’t drunk text Arthur or look at it in despair that she had no new messages. But she hadn’t, and she did have a message.

FUCKFACE: (yes, Arthur's name had been replaced with said epithet) _That was an awful thing you said at the airport today._

Yeah, it was. But fuck off.

VE: _I know. I’m sorry._

FUCKFACE: _Are you allright? Even you aren’t usually that mean. What happened?_

VE: _Corrupted by victory, I guess._

She was good at forging not being drunk, too.

FUCKFACE: _Whatever’s up your ass, you had better knock it off._

VE: _What’s it to you? It’s not like it’s ever going to bother you again whether something is or isn’t up my arse. You won’t even know whether I have or have not, in fact, knocked it off. Or do you just like to rain vengeance upon the wicked and make sure that wrongdoers are properly judged._

FUCKFACE: _I was hoping we’d see each other sooner than this hypothetical next job, but maybe I’m not so sure._

VE: _Why?_

FUCKFACE: _You’re asking me why I’d want to see you?_

VE: _Yes _.__

_FUCKFACE: _Well_  
FUCKFACE: _Because, against my better judgement, I have kind of a huge crush on you.__

VE: _Sorry Arthur, you sent that to the wrong person. This is Eames, not Ariadne._

FUCKFACE: _I fucking know who you are. Why do you make things so difficult._  
FUCKFACE: _Where are you?_

VE: L.A. _No idea why I haven't left yet. Where are you?_

FUCKFACE: _Same. And same. Can I come see you?_

And he had come.

And he’d brushed her hair back from her face, and lifted her chin with his hand, and said, “Eames, does all this mean what I think it means?” and she’d said “I have no idea what you’re talking about,”. And he’d given her that know-it-all look of his, and then his eyes softened and his eyebrows went all wiggly, and he said, with a note of surprise, “You want me.”

And she had an entire Rolodex of snarky things to say in response to that, like oh yeah, big boy, give it to me uh yeah and must be nice to be that sure of yourself and You have no idea what I want. But she knew before she said them how ridiculously hollow they’d sound. So she kissed him instead.

And then she vomited on his shoes.

“Oh, fuck, your shoes,” she said, involuntary vomit-related tears streaming down her face, throat raw and constricted. “I’m so sorry. I’ll buy you a new pair. Shit.”

He was down on the floor with her, kneeling, looking up at her where she was bent over in shame. She just didn’t do this kind of thing. She was always in control. She didn’t cry, didn’t vomit, didn’t show her hand—or her stomach contents—to anyone.

“Sweetheart, it’s OK,” he said, pulling her up with him. “They’re just shoes.”

“But you love your shoes,” she said, feeling like a repentant, drunk child.

“Yes, well, obviously given the choice between having shoes vomited on and having shoes not vomited on, I’d pick the not vomited on.” He smiled weakly. “Unless it’s you.”

And he’d helped her to the bathroom, and then took off his shoes and waited on the bed, and when she came out of the bathroom and hovered around the room still reluctant to give into him, he said, tenderly, “Come here.”

And then he pulled the elastic from her hair, and asked "Can I?" and she nodded; and he began to run a brush through her knotted hair gently and cautiously (where had he even bloody gotten a hairbrush?). And it felt so good against her tight scalp, and the cool weight of his jacket against her bare arm felt better than her past twenty orgasms combined.

“You don’t have to take care of me,” she whispered. “I’m not a little girl.”

“No,” he countered, “you’re the woman I’m in love with.”

And maybe that didn’t answer her objections, and maybe it did.

 

3.

 

He feels the swell of her belly brush against his balls as she spreads his legs and leans over him, as much as she can. She’s got his legs wrapped loosely around her hips, and her hands under the small of his back, and she slides a pillow under him there, and he feels like hugging her for that.

"You comfortable?" she asks. He nods.

"Relax, beautiful," she says. "I’ve got you."

He feels the burn in his thighs; wants to feel the burn in his thighs and hips and everywhere. Wants to feel like he’s working as hard as he can to be open to her.

And yet he also can’t help but feel relaxed. It’s hot as hell, and it’s casting a dense citylike fog over his senses; everything is slow and dampened, and he’s on his back, arching up, feeling the hidden reservoir of sweat between the sheets and the small of his back. Feeling her stroke his sides. Feeling the snug temporary seal of her mouth on his inner thigh, sucking, then traveling on to the tender area where his leg meets his pubic bone, and he feels an intimacy at knowing exactly what she’s tasting there, the salt of his sweat and the remnants of the afternoon’s cum. She hems that crease with kisses.

He reaches up to touch her lips. She takes his fingers into her mouth, closes her eyes; he feels her sweet tongue teasing his fingertip, and it’s half the actual sensation and half the semantics of what she’s doing that makes him want to whimper and moan.

He thinks she’s doing one thing, but then she takes the bottle of lube from the bed and squirts some over her fingers.

“Can I finger you?” she asks, her voice heavy and sweet.

“Oh, God, I—yes, yes,” he moans brokenly. His cock is hard and full. She leans down and takes the tip into her mouth for a moment, as if to say that she hadn’t quite forgotten about it.

Then she pulls away and his cock feels cold. The slick tip of her finger is pressing at his arsehole. She rubs that tight ring of muscle for awhile, as she sometimes does for minutes upon minutes until it makes him pant. There’s that always-bracing feeling, then, her cold entire finger inside him, and then she twists it.

She pumps her finger inside him, then strokes him inside, exploring a bit; and then she crooks her finger a little. He feels her brush against the edge of his prostate and a sharp rill of pleasure moves through his abdomen.

“Stroke yourself for me,” she breathes. She hands him the lube and he slicks up his palms, then grabs his cock and begins to rub along the top with his thumb, touches his perineum.

“Do you want another finger, gorgeous?”

“I want all your fingers,” he says, smiling.

“There will be plenty of time for that, another time.”

Her fingers are pistoning inside him again, and her arm is bracing his lower back now, drawing him toward her as if she’s about to embrace him fully. The fingers on his back are caressing, soothing. She looks down at him, doesn’t avert her gaze, her blue-grey eyes rapt and kind; it’s almost hard to bear when she looks at him like that, like he’s not just some man who likes duty for duty’s sake and wears the same shirts as ten thousand other guys and drinks protein shakes, like there’s some secret about him that she knows and he doesn’t, one that will start him on some strange new path of sublimity and fate on which he’ll need guidance and protection and love from some impossibly fierce tender spirit.

“I love touching you like this,” she breathes, edging his prostate again and making him gasp. “I can feel your pulse from the inside. I love that you let me do this.” She looks ecstatic, privileged.

“I love you so much,” he says, voice cracking from the heat and the pleasure. “So much.”

*

She was not supposed to be like this.

She was V.T. Eames, thief, forger, almost legendary creature, practically the lost daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Lawrence of Arabia. Absurdly stunning in an old Hollywood sort of way, all stony gaze and decadent mouth and a figure that could make a Roman statue jealous.

He didn’t think he stood a chance. And her amused, supercilious expression when they’d first met didn’t do much to change that impression. He felt he had to act flinty, unimpressed, macho, if he wanted to simply maintain his dignity around her; he sure couldn’t act like the panting fanboy of hers that he sort of was.

And he’d gone home and (after jacking off furiously to the thought of her lips around his cock) looked at himself in the mirror, been annoyed by his gangly limbs, his narrow hips, his young face with its sunken eyes and perpetually crabby expression. He didn’t consider himself unattractive—he knew he had a nice ass, and that he was charming especially when he remembered to smile—but he certainly wasn’t on her level.

She was only two years older, but she’d lived in thirteen countries and travelled to dozens more. She spoke four languages. She wore a white blouse and high-waisted pleated trousers, and her posture was so relaxed and effortless; he suddenly felt like he was some fifteen-year-old kid’s idea of a grownup, with no real sense of style of his own, who was just borrowing his dad’s suit.

And he thought that was how she saw him. How could she not? If she dated men, she probably dated total bruisers. Gun runners, mercenaries, assassins. Not guys who basically did the crime equivalent of office administration.

It made him spend a lot more time at the shooting range.

He began slicking his hair back—he’d had floppy, wavy hair, and lots of people found it cute, but he doubted she went for cute. He’d tried wearing his hair buzzed, and she’d told him he looked like a grumpy peach.

“Yeah, I do remember saying that,” she said years later, lying on top of him naked in a dim hotel room in Sao Paulo, his mouth still smelling faintly of just having eaten her out until she screamed. “But Arthur, I thought it went without saying that peaches are delicious.”

 

4.

 

She wishes she could feel what it’s like to have her cock in that round, perfect ass. She’s suggested trying it in a dream, and he’s still reluctant, but she’s sure eventually she can wear him down.

At least she knows what it looks like to have her cock in his round, perfect ass. She’s slowly thrusting into him, one hand behind his waist, the other jerking his cock and playing with his balls, trying to coordinate two rhythms at once. His movements are getting more erratic, and she knows he’s close; she feels how the tightening of his ass moves the apparatus in a different way.

“Is this good?” she asks. “Do you want me to go faster? Slower?

“Like this. Don’t stop.”

She reaches for one of his nipples and rubs it slowly. She knows that always gets him hot; she remembers the time he'd crawled onto her lap, and she'd wrapped her arm around his waist and sucked his tit while he moaned. She wanted to keep him there, slick up a vibrator and fuck him with it while she kissed his pretty neck, but he’d gotten uncomfortable, said he hoped she didn’t see him as too feminine.

(“No,” she’d said, honestly. “I guess I don’t even know what feminine means anymore. But if you’re worried about not being tough enough, don’t worry. Sitting in my lap doesn’t make you a less terrifying marksman. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to lie back and take your cock and call you Daddy, which if you’ll recall we just did last night, and it certainly doesn’t make me regret allowing you to be the father of my child. If you’d like, now, you may carry me over your shoulder to the bedroom and spank me all night, or make me wear a Catholic schoolgirl uniform and eat lollipops seductively while shining your shoes. I just like doing things to your body, and I like having you do things to mine.”)

She keeps up her pace, whispering words of encouragement. If she weren’t pregnant she could hold him closer while she did this, or could do it from behind, pressed against the beautiful muscles of his back, feeling them work to keep him steady on his hands and knees despite the urge to collapse from the stimulation; she could kiss the sweat from his neck and shoulders, trace his spine, observe the neat hairline at the nape of his neck which she always liked to touch.

He reaches up to touch her swollen breast, and he groans, thumbing the nipple. She runs her hand up his arm, takes his hand. Kisses his knuckles.

“Arthur,” she whispers. “Keep looking at me. My lovely man. Mmm, yes, you’re my man, and I fucking love you like this, and like everything.”

“How are you so beautiful,” he chokes. “Oh god, I’m gonna—“

His body tightens and he shouts her name as he orgasms, deep, intense, and he comes all over her hand, and around her cock in his ass. And she’s in awe of him, how he owns himself, how he understands himself, how (she thinks) he’s learned to give himself to her without feeling compromised because he knows he can trust her with his full array of desires, no matter the shapes, knows that she will never truly humiliate him or use his vulnerability to leverage herself.

She wishes she could do the same.

 

5.

 

They lie there—how long have they spent lying in this bed? Arthur doesn’t want or need to count. She’s in his arms, as exhausted as he is if not more, and he makes sure she’s feeling allright, traces down her arm, holds her hand as she held his while they fucked and confessed what always still, after all that time, felt like a confession.

Then the phone rings. It’s his mother.

She’s more concerned with modesty than he is, pulls a shirt on (his) and hisses, “Arthur, we can’t talk to you mother _naked_ ,” to which Arthur says “I don’t see why we need to speak to my mother _at all_ ”, but they’d promised to give her the update on Eames’s latest doctors’ visit, and that was three days ago.

They put her on speakerphone.

“Everything looks great, Peggy,” Eames chirps. “Just one more month, can you believe it?”

“Yeah, the kid’s due on Roger Penrose’s birthday,” Arthur says, not a bit proudly.

“Three fire signs in one house,” Mrs. Goldwasser muses. “It’s going to be some special energy for sure.”

“Oh my fucking god,” Arthur groans, putting his head in his hands. “For the nine hundredth time, mother, that shit is bogus. I am not a sheep.”

“I am a bit of a centaur, though, right Arthur?” Eames winks. “You know what they’re like.”

“Oh stop.”

“Well, when William or Olivia—“

“William,” says Eames, smiling.

“Eames!” Arthur exclaims. “I said I didn’t want to know! I thought you didn’t either…They’re sure?”

“I just couldn't not know. And the sonogram did show a tiny bow tie and Glock, so I’m pretty sure it’s a little you.”

“Arthur, why would your baby have a Glock?” his mother asks, confused.

“Arthur likes gangsta rap,” Eames grins. “Oh, also, I’ve got more exciting news. Arthur’s growing a beard.”

"I am n-"

"Arthur's been all about leaving his comfort zone lately," she says, grinning at him.

He sighs and kisses her neck.

"She's right. I have."


End file.
